Work While It Is Called To-Day.
[Remarks made at the meeting of the Oakland Missionary Society, Tuesday evening, July 7.] THERE being no SIGNS to distribute, the president drew a lesson from it, asking what we would do if it were so that we could never have any more SIGNS, nor anything in its place. If this were so, would we not all carefully gather up every piece of whatever old ones we might find, and try to get them before our neighbors? Would we not prize pieces of old SIGNS more than we now prize whole new ones? It is ever so. We fail to realize the value of our greatest blessings, till they are gone. King Solomon made shields of gold, which were used in the house of the Lord. But because of Rehoboam's sin, Shishak, king of Egypt, came up to Jerusalem and carried them away. Then Rehoboam made in their stead shields of copper, and then was as careful of the shields of copper as he should have been of the shields of gold. It is so with us all. We fail to properly prize our dearest treasures, and then when we have lost them, we gather to ourselves something that will compare with them as copper with gold, and then we bestow upon this the care and devotion we should have bestowed upon the original, which, if we had given the475proper care, we never would have lost. True it is better to have shields of copper than to have no shields at all; but it is far better to have shields of gold, and to so prize them that we may never lose them. Again, we can do better work, by less exertion with the best, than we can do by greater exertion with that which is inferior. God has given us the very best; he has given us even shields of gold. Let us use them as faithfully as we would use shields of copper, if we should lose our shields of gold. We can do vastly better work so; and the Lord wants us to do it this way. Then let us prize the SIGNS now as we would wish we had prized it if we should be deprived of it. In one of the letters read this evening the SIGNS is called a "magazine." That is not far amiss; for it is a fact that there is not a magazine in the United States, that in a year, gives as much nor as good reading as is found in the SIGNS, and that at only half the price of a magazine. Our attention has been called to the thoughts in "Testimony No. 32" where it speaks of the children of Israel being compelled to do what they were expected to do cheerfully. God chose them to give the knowledge of himself to the nations which knew him not. He revealed himself to them, as to no other people. He gave them familiarity with truths which other nations hardly dreamed of; and he expected them—he intended for them—to give it to the other nations. But they shut it up within themselves, and refused to impart it to others. Then, because of their sins, God scattered them to every nation under heaven, and they were thus compelled to do in sorrow and in affliction what they might have done in joy and gladness. And, more, in being thus compelled to do it, they received no credit and no reward for it. Whereas, had they done it as the Lord wished them to do, no tongue can tell the riches of the reward that would have been bestowed upon that blessed nation. Now here are we in the same position. We have a truth that no other people has. God has given it to us to give to all nations. Now shall we do it cheerfully, joyfully, gladly, and reap a harvest of joy, unspeakable, and full of glory; or shall we by our neglect and shortcoming be compelled in sorrow and distress to give it anyhow and then receive no reward? May the Lord help us to do his will with his truth, cheerfully, that we may have his blessing and finally the joy that will come to the cheerful, faithful worker.